


Tamed

by Dame_Lazarus



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: F/M, Fluff, Happily Ever After, Post-Canon, marriage AU, r/jaimebrienne
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-23
Updated: 2020-01-23
Packaged: 2021-02-27 03:48:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,408
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22370548
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dame_Lazarus/pseuds/Dame_Lazarus
Summary: “If you eat my wife, I’ll put your head on a pike,” Jaime told him. He didn’t fight two bloody wars and win Brienne against the odds just to lose her to a cat in a cage.
Relationships: Jaime Lannister/Brienne of Tarth
Comments: 70
Kudos: 325
Collections: Jaime and Brienne Subreddit Fan Creation Challenges





	Tamed

**Author's Note:**

> This ficlet brought to you by: me hiding from the sound of Mitch McConnell’s voice, the wedding-industrial complex, and the Jaime/Brienne subreddit fan creation challenge.

Jaime did not expect to be the center of attention at his own wedding. However, he did not expect for both his bride and himself to be upstaged by a damned gift.

It arrived on Tarth the day before the official ceremony. Four very morose young men carried it up from the shore on a slab of discarded wood. They moved slowly, painfully, and they could not look Brienne or her father in the eye as they presented the gift to them in Evenfall’s great hall.

“Is that a lion?” Tyrion asked, winding to the front of the small passel of wedding guests who had assembled to get a glimpse of the mysterious gift that had arrived at port that morning.

Jaime had never actually seen a lion. He’d seen many, many depictions of them—once after a battle he closed his eyes and all he could see were lions on crimson, waving in the breeze. It wouldn’t surprise him if it were an entirely made-up creature that his ancestors thought sounded intimidating and thus fit to plaster upon every surface they could get their hands on.

But, based on his limited knowledge, he was fairly certain that this creature, pacing back and forth in a metal cage, was a lion: an overgrown cat, the size of a small foal, bearing undoubtedly very sharp teeth and shaking a ragged mane.

“Did—is there a note saying who sent it?” Brienne asked, hesitant.

The men carrying the lion shook their heads glumly. Lord Selwyn’s expression tightened.

“It was once custom to bestow a lord’s eldest daughter her new house’s animal in honor of her marriage,” Sansa Stark piped up, after an awkward silence.

Jaime and his brother shared a skeptical look. _Honor. If only._

***

“What about the Reynes?”

Tyrion drained his goblet of wine. His drinking habits has followed him gleefully into peacetime and he was already imbibing entirely too much wine for the morning of any day, let alone a day that will revolve entirely around drinking. “Has your time on Tarth addled your brain? Father drowned all of them. There’s a very unsettling song about it.”

Jaime shrugged. “Maybe there is a vengeful bastard out there.”

“When it comes to our family, everyone is vengeful.”

Jaime hadn’t forgotten _that_ , of course.

***

“Do you take this woman?” the Septon asked.

In the distance, a lion roared and the shaking metal bars of its cage echoed on the afternoon breeze. A smattering of giggles broke out among the crowd.

Brienne squeezed his hand. He grinned up at her. The lion had the right of it.

***

In the weeks leading up to the nuptials, they had all worried endlessly about how they would fit all the guests into the great hall at Evenfall for the wedding feast. The initial guest list was enormous: nobles of the Stormlands, nobles of the Westerlands; the court of the North, the court of the South; comrades from the Battle of the Dead, comrades from the Battle of the Two Queens. But, they reasoned, who would want to travel all the way to Tarth to see the wedding of two people who had been living as husband and wife for the duration of two wars now anyway?

 _Everyone_. Everyone wanted to come. Not one invitation was declined.

“You’re the fabled lovers from song! Your love saved Westeros from tyranny! Of course everyone wants to be here.” Ser Podrick was caught up in the wedding spirit perhaps even more than Jaime or his bride.

In the end, they made it work. They commissioned extra tables and arranged them so the crowd would spill outdoors onto a newly created stone veranda just outside the great hall. They hired a second harpist to play in the open air in addition to the one inside.

The problem now, on the day of, was the lion. His cage was hastily placed just out of view of the new veranda. The messengers had not been able to carry it much farther after carrying it all the way up to the castle and the intended recipients were unsure about what else to do with it. This was a problem for after the wedding. Nevertheless, the lion wasn’t shy about making himself known. He growled and mewled at the smell of meat and at the lively chatter. So many people traipsed over to gawk at the creature that Jaime was beginning to feel bad for the outside harpist, who barely had an audience of his own.

“Do you feel a special kinship with your lion?” Arya Stark asked him with a mischievous look in her eye. Her sister was deeply engrossed in a proper conversation with Brienne and her father just to their left, leaving them to their own devices.

“It did look ready to murder me earlier,” Jaime replied, “which I suppose for me counts well enough.”

Arya laughed a big, gleeful laugh at that. It was so strange and oddly wonderful to share a joke with her, of all people, that Jaime couldn’t help but join in. From the corner of his eye he caught Brienne glancing his way, her face full of warmth and softness.

***

“The lion sounds sad,” Brienne murmured that night, lying boneless on his chest in bed.

“Wench, you have your own metaphorical lion entirely at your mercy, and you concern yourself with _him_?”

She lifted her head to smirk up at him. “You’re the one who charged me to defend the defenseless.”

He rolled her to her back underneath him. “I’d rather have you defenseless, just now.”

***

“House Cobb!” Tyrion exclaimed over their morning meal. “I didn’t see anyone from House Cobb here. Perhaps they felt slighted.”

“Tyrion, it really doesn’t matter who sent the lion,” Brienne said, cutting herself a slice of bread.

***

It took almost a week to clear all the guests out from Evenfall. Tyrion was the last to leave. His theories about the lion’s provenance became so outlandish that Jaime was starting to think he was just making up houses.

“What shall we do with your lion?” Selwyn asked him, on the first quiet afternoon after they officially became family.

The beast lay on its side in a sliver of sunlight, snoring. He was, Jaime noticed, a scraggly creature; his ribs poked through his mangy fur with each breath and his left ear was missing a coin-sized chunk from the tip.

“You shall have to ask my wife.” The word was delicious on his lips. “She’s taken quite a liking to him.”

“She does have a soft spot for pitiful creatures,” Selwyn said, patting him on the back.

“May I always be worthy of it,” he replied.

***

One morning he walked out in the yard to see Brienne not two paces from the lion’s cage. She had her hand in between the bars, the lion’s mouth on her fingers, and Jaime practically flew across the grass, his sword unsheathed.

“Jaime!” She jumped back in alarm. “I’m just feeding him! Everything is all right!”

Jaime bent at the waist, hand on his thigh, his breath coming in heavy. “Feeding him? Wench, he’ll take your arm off!”

He watched in horror as she reached in to pat the lion softly on his head. “Nonsense. He likes me. Don’t worry.”

He looked the lion in the eye. The creature just licked his lips lazily and stared back.

“If you eat my wife, I’ll put your head on a pike,” Jaime told him. He didn’t fight two bloody wars and win Brienne against the odds just to lose her to a cat in a cage.

***

In a clearing on the edge of a lush pine forest, a patch only just visible from the highest tower of Evenfall Hall, six of Tarth’s finest stonemasons toiled on a tall stone wall. It surrounded an artificial cave and a manmade pond rimmed with soft sand and tufts of stiff grasses.

“Do you think he’ll like it?” Brienne wondered.

“I guess if he doesn’t, we’ll find out soon enough.”

She smacked him on the arm. “Maybe we should get him a companion. A lioness.”

“All that bloodshed, and you still have a maiden’s soft heart,” he teased, hooking an arm around her waist.

“I just don’t think anyone should be alone,” she said, her face earnest and her deep blue eyes locking with his.

 _Thank the gods I’ll never be_ , Jaime thought as he pulled her in to a kiss.

**Author's Note:**

> Edit (April 20, 2020): I finally found the fic with the offhand comments from Jaime that sparked this idea. In “All Those Shadows Almost Killed Your Light” by fowlaa, Jaime sees Arya with Nymeria, is reminded of Dany and her dragons, and then thinks how no one ever gave _him_ a lion to go with _his_ sigil. What would he do if someone actually did? I wondered.


End file.
